The Winter Sickness

  And no one contradicted him to tell him it wasn’t.

  So, no firing squad. Although the image stayed with Toby, and he knew that it would until do he’d faced whatever real-life punishment awaited him at the foot of the mountain – that line of men would always be around the next corner, guns raised to fire.

  Toby was miles away, thinking through what he’d just heard and said. Around him were locals, shellshocked, wondering what could come next, what fresh horror? This was no ordinary winter, even by Stovian standards.

  ‘This isn’t even the Worst Year,’ said someone in the crowd. ‘This is out-worsting the Worst Year.’

  Toby rubbed his hand over his unshaven chin, and realised he was looking at a face in the crowd; and that that face was looking back at him. As Toby focused so the face grew suddenly nervous, and the person bearing it bolted away from the scene. At that moment Toby recognised it, and shouted,

  ‘Benjamin! Benjamin Drew. Come back.’

  With his boots slipping on the slush, the battered Deputy... no, battered Sheriff... he was forgetting... went in pursuit. The thin crowd parted as he bolted at them. Yet those who saw him closely would report not mania in his eyes. Instead they saw happiness, even joy. And so this sighting bought them joy, which had been in rare supply those recent weeks.

  Toby caught a glimpse of Benjamin Drew dashing between two white-washed clapperboard houses. He was moving quickly given the conditions, and Toby wasn’t in the best shape to catch him. At least three parts of him hurt with every footfall, and yet he matched Drew’s pace of running. Toby was also shouting, as Benjamin turned at a right angle behind one of the houses.

  ‘Stop, stop! I just want to ask you a question. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t care why you’re here. I wasn’t there that year. It wasn’t me that brought you back.’

  Toby came around the corner to a two-by-four beam swung right into his midriff. As he went down so Drew dropped the pulled-up fencepost, and jumped over his pursuer to go off in the direction they had just come from.

  Toby inhaled with the intensity of a starting jet engine, such was the effort required to refill his lungs. The blow had seemed to unlock all his other injuries, as though a spell had been broken.

  ‘Stop...’ he cried hoarsely. His breath slow in returning, and he even feared the taste of blood in his throat. ‘I just want... to ask... you... a question...’ Toby staggered up and into a jog, looking out for freshly trodden snow. Also for places where Drew might have been lying in wait to hit him again.

  Toby peered cautiously behind an empty chicken coop thick with white ice flakes, then around the corner of the next building. But by the time he got to each place it was hopeless, and Drew would have had too much of a head-start.

  And then Toby heard a noise. It was a whining, tiny and hard to place. He staggered onwards behind houses, and through unfenced back yards. Had the owners objected to this intrusion, then they didn’t leave their homes to confront the juddering, injured figure in his bloodied uniform, his ripped shirt, and his tie still held down by a silver clip, as it had been all along the line. For Toby had become the town’s boogieman, a murderous vision of everything to warn your kids against becoming, a photo-negative of all that was wholesome in small-town life.

  Now that he’d stopped running, Toby was suddenly bitter-cold and pulled his jacket tight around him. The moaning grew louder. There was no other sound – no one else had followed them from the street.

  Near the end of the run of houses, Toby became aware that the sound was coming from just around the next corner. He turned it slowly, arms in front of him in useless protection. And there before him was Benjamin Drew, lying on his back, a smashed old bicycle beside him. A bent wheel-spoke had entered one side of his left leg and was poking out the other. The man whimpered as he reached his hands to his injury, then whimpered again as he was too scared to touch.

  ‘Don’t move,’ said Toby, kneeling beside him.

  ‘My brother!’ shouted Drew. ‘My younger brother, Simon. He had a bad year last year, and I had to come back to help him.’

  ‘It’s okay, it’s okay.’ Toby took the man’s jeans-clad leg between both hands, and rolled it slowly till he saw both ends of the spoke.

  ‘Our mother died two years ago. Our family get it bad, and my Dad was... tough with me in my time. I had to be here for Simon.’

  Toby only said, ‘Be still.’

  Judging which end was the cleanest, Toby wiped the spoke in fresh snow. Then he braced, and took the thin metal in both hands. Benjamin continued to babble,

  ‘I didn’t want Sheriff Thornton knowing I was back. I didn’t... agh!’

  Toby threw the spoke away, then squeezed the patient’s hand,

  ‘It’s out now. It’s out now. Breathe, breathe.’

  Suddenly the man smiled at Toby, as if everything was all right. And just as suddenly Toby knew the question he wanted to ask, and he did so,

  ‘Benjamin. The year you ran away.’

  ‘I won’t do it again, Sheriff. I know the Restrictions. I won’t run again. I promise I won’t.’

  Toby realised how gruesome he must have looked to Drew, in his bloodied butcher’s uniform. But he tried to calm him, speaking as softly as his wrecked voice could manage,

  ‘None of that matters now, Benjamin. It’s over. The town’s over. But you have to tell me – when you ran away, did the sickness follow you?’

  Drew looked at Toby with the eyes of one who hadn’t thought to consider the question before.

  Toby asked again, ‘When you got to Gaidon, were you still ill?’

  Drew bore the look of one evangelised, as he answered,

  ‘I... I don’t think I was. No, I don’t think I was.’

  Between the roofs of the houses they were sat amongst, Toby could just see the tip of one of the mountains. Turning his head, he saw the other. Toby looked up at that those snow-topped crags; that peered down at people wherever they were in Stove; that loomed over buildings and filled their windows; the first things they saw when they opened their curtains, and the last thing when they closed them at night.

  ‘It’s you,’ he said to the mountains. ‘It’s being next to you. Gaidon’s only down the road, and that’s enough.’

  Statement of the obvious: no one else was living like this, surely to heaven. Of course it was only them. Gaidon was fine.

  When the men emerged from behind the houses, they found the remnants of the crowd still milling in the town’s streets, waiting for someone, anyone, to tell them what to do.

  Seeing those two battered figures, the first thought of some may have been, ‘Oh no, who’s the Sheriff gone and injured this time?’ Yet that caption didn’t fit the picture. Not when the one in uniform was supporting the other. Not when the injured man looked to the tarnished lawman as if to a saviour. And not when that lawman wore an even larger smile than before.

  ‘Can anyone run an errand for me?’ he asked, and half a dozen were happy to oblige. ‘Actually, two errands. Firstly, can you get this man in to the clinic? He needs a tetanus shot.’

  Within moments two men were carrying Benjamin Drew off to be seen by the nurses.

  ‘And secondly, can someone get to the Stovian Sunset. I need Job and Fitch here now.’

  ‘Right away, Sheriff.’ A young husband and wife ran for the guest house.

  Toby muttered, ‘It really will be fine. The sickness doesn’t follow. It really will be fine.’ The broken Sheriff realised he was dog-tired. Cold already, hurting his whole life, he let his legs go and just sat there on the slushy tarmac, smiling like a loon.

  Chapter 76 – Preparations

  The town of Stove had a secret. Of course, it had a lot of secrets. But perhaps the cruellest and most-specific was that which Fitch was about to expose. For it was not known to most of the townsfolk that the Sheriff’s Office had a snowplough.

  This was not the shovels and scoops and grit-throwers used to keep the town centre’s sidewalks passa
ble. Nor even the Jeep with the boat’s-prow accoutrement sometimes seen trying to keep Main Street clear. But a proper snowplough, like a ten-foot turbine blade, strong enough to keep a highway free in all conditions.

  It remained a secret so as to stop any unhappy locals getting ideas; and could remain so as the Sheriff’s Office didn’t usually clear most of the roads during winter, for no one with a vehicle had anywhere to go that wasn’t walkable. And anyway, snow made every journey harder and kept people in their homes.

  Little Fitch, now a bundle of nervous energy, used a snow-scoop resting outside the workshed to clear a space to let him open the doors. Within the dull-white shack was the town truck. Nothing secret there – it was seen all summer long towing broken-down cars or moving roadsigns. What wasn’t seen though was what was kept in the cupboard at the back of its shed.

  Once he had the truck’s engine running, Fitch unpadlocked that cupboard, and dragged out the gleaming cleaver of snow. As he did so sparks burst from its lower edge. The blade was almost as tall as him. Some parts were shiny, others scuffed, but all of it talked business.

  It was the work of one man to hitch it to the truck and set it at five-inches’ clearance. Fitch turned the key in the truck’s ignition and let the engine warm up. And he was full of excitement as he got behind the wheel, laughing,

  ‘This’ll cause a stir when it rolls into town!’

  Meanwhile, in the town centre Job was calling at the top of his lungs,

  ‘Anyone with a four-by-four, get it here now. Anyone with a suffering teenager, get them here now. They can keep warm in the shops till it’s time.’

  ‘But how?’ people asked. ‘There are five-foot drifts on that mountain road. What good are four-by-fours outside of town?’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Job with a good-natured smirk.

  For what had overtaken Job and Fitch was a childlike thrill of disobedience. This was a feeling not often available to an adult, and usually only then when drunk and repentable at leisure. Yet to be offered a chance to break the Winter Restrictions fed into wishes held since childhood.

  That pleasure, and the acknowledgement of the disaster the town was facing, had almost been enough for Job and Fitch to throw aside their duties. Yet what had sealed it had been that their leader had totally committed himself. And so when Toby asked his two lieutenants which side they would fall down on, they didn’t need asking twice. Job’s earlier awkwardness had been part-shock and part-pique at having initially been left out of Toby’s inner-circle. Meanwhile, Fitch was giddy with glee from the moment he was let into the plan.

  At one end of Main Street, across from the clinic by the grocers, was an open corner-lot they called the Town Square. There had been attempts at flower beds along the sidewalk edge, but they had gotten so trampled in the winter that the roses were now grown in tubs that were taken inside before the first flurries.

  The square was now the backdrop for a scene that was part disaster-movie, part refugee crisis, and part town-outing. Everywhere were people in winter coats and wrapped in blankets, and everyone not personally afflicted by the sickness had someone with them they were caring for.

  In many towns those needing the most assistance would have been the old. But this being the broken town of Stove, uniquely many of the hurting were the young. Yet families couldn’t just leave their aged relatives to fend for themselves, and so it was the job of the middle-aged to care for both.

  The old were suffering from the cold. The young from the sickness – they’d hardly notice the weather. People were arriving outside in sheepskin slippers and wrapped in bedsheets, as if from a fire drill in a hospital. The sufferers of all ages were brought into crowded shops to sit on fold-out chairs and be given cups of coffee.

  Underpinning all this was the incredible noise: of vehicles revving into position; of voices calling and crying; of bags being dragged and dropped; of belongings being gathered then cast aside when there wasn’t room; and of furniture and fence panels being smashed to start fires in the middle of the street.

  For what had happened with Job and Fitch was happening to the town’s population at large. They had all been inching along a see-saw, waiting for one person to be first to tip it over.

  Janey spent that afternoon hour dashing between the square and the School for Girls. Seeing it all together like this, she was struck by a series of instant and powerful sensations: she saw the gibbering, shaking, confused people being moved by their carers, and it looked to her like an outing of the residents of an old-fashioned asylum, the kind where people were thrown in for their entire lives.

  Her second thought was that there was joy there, even amid the confusion and uncertainty. People were laughing, sharing camaraderie, experiencing something. And she realised that they were smiling; and that she was too.

  In the melee Jake was hardly minded. He made himself useful bringing blankets from the clinic, and also bottles of medicinal whiskey from the liquor store. The owner was throwing the stuff at anyone who wanted it, explaining,

  ‘They’ll only loot me when we’ve left. And I won’t be back here, screw this town.’

  Jake popped the cap off a bottle and took a swig himself, and let the fire roll into his belly.

  He bumped into Janey then,

  ‘It’s like The War of the Worlds,’ she said, ‘when they run to the mountains.’

  ‘Yeah, only now we’re running from them.’

  ‘Are you all right, Miss?’

  This was Lana, her Junior who’d been sent to find her.

  ‘Yes, quite all right, thank you,’ answered Janey. ‘Isn’t it wonderful, Lana.’

  The youngster observed, ‘It’s like we’re all being honest with each other at last.’

  Janey smiled, ‘I knew I’d picked the right girl to be my Junior.’

  They shared the kind of moment only women can, and then with nods to Jake, continued smiling as they hurried back to the School.

  Amid all this, Toby occupied some nominal leadership role. He was running on empty though, and barely able to keep his eyes focused on the same object for five seconds straight. Thankfully, the machinery of the town seemed to be running by itself, as though always waiting for this moment.

  Occasionally a question came to Toby, and he answered as best he could:

  ‘Do we call ahead?’

  ‘No, I don’t want them knowing we’re coming. It might confuse things.’

  ‘Who goes first?’

  ‘The emergencies are all going on the truck. Gaidon can manage those few, no problem. We can find room for the others after that.’

  Indeed, the patients of the clinic were being taken to Fitch at that very moment. This was supervised by one of the nurses, as the Doctor was sedated and among her charges.

  Not all the patients left though, for Andrew Sippitz was too delicate to move. He’d remain at the clinic with the other nurse and a guard of local men.

  Chapter 77 – Exodus

  The convoy was nearing readiness to leave, although it was still missing some essential pieces. And then another, older truck swung around the corner and into the busy square, this one arriving from the School for Girls.

  Toby was griped by the sight. It recalled an old film he had seen many years ago, set during the French Revolution: in their nightdresses and with their long hair flowing, the girls were holding onto the back of the pallet-sided lorry like aristocrats being carted to the Guillotine. Only these were happy aristocrats.

  And then there was a gunshot. People scattered to the edges of the public space, while others stood frozen, as a group of four Deputies arrived, rustled up from somewhere, and led by Eddy.

  He displayed a swaggering bravado that Toby hadn’t seen in him since childhood, racing go-carts as his Indy Car heroes, or being the top cowboy on their mountainous prairie. Yet now, that childhood spirit of derring-do was mixed with fear, adult fear, the type you didn’t get till you were older. He asked,

  ‘What are you doing, Toby?’ r />
  ‘You know what I’m doing,’ answered the Sheriff.

  ‘I was on a call. Bill here had to fetch me.’

  ‘Well, what difference does that make..?’

  ‘Only that it looks like I got here just in time to stop you making a fool of yourself. Crawley always said the town wouldn’t last a week with you in charge.’

  ‘You’d rather talk about him, after what he did?’

  ‘And you’re telling me he wasn’t right? I’ll have that badge off you now, Tobes.’ Eddy called to the crowd, ‘Come on, everyone. Back to your homes.’

  But no one went.

  ‘No, Eddy,’ said Toby, feeling like a twelve-year-old standing up to the class bully. ‘You used to have the run of things when we were kids, but no more.’

  Eddy leaned in,

  ‘This isn’t about childhood, Toby. You’re going to ruin both of our lives. Now, this is killing me, don’t make it any harder. Just give me the badge, and you can get back up your hillside and carry on as you did before.’

  ‘I can’t, Eddy.’

  All this time the town stood around them, the recent chaos stilled to silence.

  ‘You know we’re armed?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘I heard the shot.’

  ‘Yet still you’d do this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But... why?’

  ‘It can’t go on!’ Toby called out in hopelessness.

  ‘Yes it can,’ answered Eddy. ‘It can go on forever!’

  Toby looked at his friend and those behind him. If they won this battle then Toby guessed the kind of leaders they would make. He figured aloud,

  ‘So Eddy, you’ve been under Crawley’s shadow also? How does it feel to be the big man now?’

  But Eddy only shook his head,

  ‘No, Toby. It was me protecting him. Don’t you get it?’

  And just then Toby did, with nauseous clarity, like a perfect view from a sickening cliff-drop. Toby reasoned out loud,

  ‘You kept Crawley’s secret. You shot the Deputy who wanted to reveal him. You murdered for a murderer.’

  ‘You see Toby, we understood, Crawley and me. We knew what it took to run this town. I thought we could protect you from it forever, but you had to keep chipping away, didn’t you: making people feel guilty, not letting them forget, carrying that cross on your back like a martyred saint.’